The story
Accidentally coined by German-American film director Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947), who had difficulty speaking English, to describe the encounter between the characters played by Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper in the film Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938).
First known use, by meaning
- from early 20th c. Of characters in a story or people in real life: to meet each other in an adorable, amusing, or cute way.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.